Some storage systems have performance requirements for random and sequential operations. Random operation performance is sometimes defined in input-output operations per second (IOPS), which define the number of random commands the storage system can execute in one second. This number also determines the maximum time of each pipeline stage in the command processing path. The storage system can use a high-frequency clock in order to achieve its performance requirement. In some storage systems, this clock is gated off when there are no pending commands.